3 steps to get prospects to contact you first

When a potential client wants to speak with you it means they’ve done enough work to figure out they have a problem you might be able to help with.

That’s no small feat because most people don’t spend much time thinking about personal finance. The quiet nagging feeling they should do something about their finances never quite makes it to the top of their to-do list. That is until some significant life event means they can’t ignore it any longer. Maybe it’s an inheritance or perhaps it’s redundancy later in life.

Most advisers wait for clients to come to them. From a business perspective that means you have little control over your client pipeline and a lower lifetime value per client. From a client perspective it means missing out on starting their financial plans early and they’re less prepared when those big life events do come along.

The alternative is helping potential clients to find their motivation before it becomes urgent (and before they find another adviser).

In 2023, I became Head of Marketing for an online retirement planning service. Lead generation was slow and my brief was to turn it around.

The service had been promoted in the past based on its features. Things like being low-cost, tax-efficient and holistic. All good things, so why weren’t potential clients showing any interest?

It didn’t take much client research to confirm that whilst most people have a low-level anxiety about their finances, it rarely makes it to the top of the to-do list. As a result they don’t have clarity about what is causing that nagging feeling or the cost of not dealing with it.

Without the clarity they couldn’t see the problem that the fantastic retirement planning service would solve.

No clarity means no motivation.

Lead generation started to improve when I switched from promoting the service to focusing on the client pain points that the service solved.

This works because:

But nobody wants to scaremonger, so how do you do it with a delicate touch?

Your existing clients are a good guide to finding effective motivations. What were their pain points when they came to you?

Not necessarily what they thought their problem was, but the pain point beneath it.

The gentle way to bring clarity to that pain point is to ask your potential clients a question they can’t answer.

It’s a delicate way to bring up the topic because the response from a potential client is self-generated and personal.

Its an effective way to bring up the topic because an unanswerable question brings clarity to the problem and what a solution would do for them (ie provide the answer).

With the retirement planning service it was questions around “When will you be able to retire?” and “What lifestyle will you be able to afford when you retire?”.

Knowing the questions is one thing. Using them to get potential clients to contact you is another. You need to ask the question in public as widely as possible, and at the end mention your service as a way to get help finding an answer.

I’ve seen it work in LinkedIn posts, email newsletters, presentations and webinars. Wherever your potential clients are is the right place.